Optimum Girths

Comparing Nibs

I don't think many people hand-write much these days apart from shopping lists. I hand write lots - having written a diary since I was a teenager.

I mentioned this to Mark the other day on a video call and we got our nibs out and had a comparison.

He surprised me by getting out his vintage Parkers. Beautiful things, So elegant.

While some people love watches, I love stationery.

Here are 3 of my pens: 2 Rotring Art Pens and a Lamy Accent. I had a Cross which I wrote with for years but it recently bit the big one. So I took up with the Lamy Again.

Some pens

Post

I love getting things in the post and today was a very special day. 

In 1992 on the Tottenham Court Road I did a personality test. It said I was a very BAD person.

I didn't want to be a BAD person. Luckily they had a book which would make me into a GOOD person.

It was called Dianetics.

I bought it but didn't read it. 

32 years later they're still sending me these every few months.

Contains a lock of Tom Cruise's pubes, destined for Ebay

I love how desperate/persistent they are. They have less than 40,000 estimated people left in Scientology and as a result they are running out of money. 

One of the good things about the internet is now everyone can see how preposterous it is as nothing is hidden - they can't keep a lid on their secrets anymore.

We all know about hydrogen bombs and Thetans and volcanoes and Xenu. It's laughably-bad trash-sci-fi made into a religion. And we can all see it and make fun of it all, which of course they cannot bear.

Good.

And then my new pants came as well. 

State of the (f)art pant

What a day! Can't wait to wear these bad boys.

Think I'll get the letter framed.

Accents

I like accents

When I was at school kids were bussed in from surrounding villages I'd never heard of. Some of them had accents so thick I could barely understand them.

You never hear westcountry accents elsewhere - especially London. Everyone assumes you're dumb if you speak in the westcountry burr, so if you have one people tend to lose them.

People in London - especially public school types - also think that about the Welsh. Don't believe me? Having Welsh parents I'm particularly sensitive to these things, and people say the most extraordinary things they wouldn't dare say about West Indian or Pakistani people anymore, instead directing their bigotry against other minorities.

I realise the animosity works both ways.

But you get my point.

Now that I've returned to the town of my birth I seldom hear those very strong accents from 40 years ago. I think with decades of radio, television and now social media those accents have homogenised. 

The BBC has an archive of regional accents going back to the 1920s in remote parts of rural Britain, and most have disappeared.

Thanks to those awfully bright people who run the BBC, it's no longer available.

Anus is best said in a south African accent. The south African tongue around ‘anus’ is something to behold; something to savour.

“Yah. EYEnoose is my five-reet word.” (How to speak South African.)

“ ‘andy tups.” What you get from watching daytime TV.

The same person said:

"When I shout at someone, it's all over after that."

 Well, it may be all over for you, but it may not be for them.

Bloody cardigan-wearer.

The size of heads

I have a very large head. It is in disproportion to my puny frame. I take a XL in hats. 

Not a large - AN XL!!

Jacqui has a very small head. Think a lemon and a grapefruit.

As scientific as it gets

I wish I didn't have such a massive head. 

I wish I was a little bit taller...

Why I want to live in a Carry on world

I want Barbara Windsor to wiggle past to the music of Eric Rogers.

I want Charles Hawtrey to keep a hot water bottle under his kilt because it keeps his dangler warm.

I want Valerie Leon to work in a camping shop and show me how to get the [tent} pole up.

I want Terry Scott to be Tarzan.

I want Kenneth Williams to be Kenneth Williams over and over again.

I want Bernard Bresslaw to say 'I only arsked' in his high-pitched voice.

I want Sid James to be the lothario and do his laugh and go "Cor blimey!" when he sees a naked lady.

I want Joan Sims to be absolutely disgusted when the nude men turn around.

I want compulsory double entendres.

I want distinctive, infectious laughter.

I want silly to replace depression.

I want to be a highly repressed male surrounded by right dolly birds.

And what is wrong with that?

Oh. Okay.

I need to talk about stationery

My lovely stationery

Above is a selection ladies and gentlemen, of my lovely stationery. By sharing this you will now think I am really cool and want to be my friend etc. I need ALL of these pencils and the Post-its but especially the tabs. I love tabs. (As you can see.)

They have to be actual Post-it notes and not imposters as the others never stick or stay put long enough. I despair of stationery suppliers who try to fob me off with 3rd party sticky notes. I mean, what are they trying to pull here? Do they take me for a fool?

The highlighters at the bottom of the shot are Japanese. I took a while to find these. They're not quite the colours I would have chosen but what's great about them is they have a really weird window in the nib so I guess you can see the characters as you highlight so you can highlight individual Japanese characters. Makes sense.

Propus highlighter nib

I use pencils and fountain pens to write with. I am known for my handwriting. I use a Rotring Art Pen 1.1 and a Cross fountain pen for my diary. The Cross has the best flow of a fountain pen I've ever used. Not too much and not too dry - just right. I prefer Waterman ink to Parker Quink. The latter is acknowledged as the best but that's my personal preference.

By the way, I really really hate it when people borrow a rubber at gaming sessions and don't give it back IMMEDIATELY. This is very egregious behaviour and is very difficult to tolerate. They should work on this.

Talking of gaming, most players are pretty OCD (can you imagine!) and like to keep their books pristine. I used to be like that, but I grew out of it and these days - with my brain being what it is - I have to do a lot of background work before a game session.

It's very difficult to retain new information, and there can be a lot of it. For the game to flow I need to cram as much information as I can. The only way I can do this is to precis the whole book along with highlighting and tabbing the information within.

It takes about maybe 12 hours to prep around 20-30 pages.

WARNING! This following image would be considered desecration to a lot of gamers:

Covered in tabs, Post-its and highlighter

An A5 notebook with my summation of the text

I also buy a third party set of notes on the adventure so I can cross-reference those AS WELL and check if I've got the gist right. I have them as PDFs on my iPad when I'm Dungeon Master. It's the only way I can do it. Having all these resources also gives me the confidence to DM. I guess it's like a performer (say, Ozzie Osbourne) going through rituals before they go on stage. It's only before all these are completed thoroughly that I can feel relaxed enough to deliver a good session. I'm a people-pleaser by nature so I want everyone to have a good time, and this will all make me feel confident and we'll get a good result.

Here are some of my dice. I have to buy new ones now and again as they run out of juice and don't roll high enough, so having the new ones lets the older ones recharge. There are a lot of people like me who think like this (although not all of them will admit it) and again, this is perfectly normal.

Some of my lovely dice

So I've done my prep for The Final Enemy and I'm now thinking what else do I need to do? I had a really productive and busy day yesterday but today I feel rather dizzy. I might have overdone it. But sometimes it's worth doing. Poor night's sleep though. One of those where I fought a mighty battle against the duvet.

I guess I'll read through everything on the day and add some more touches - like the characters of the boatmen who take them to the isle, weather, encounters on their journey there etc.

I'll be DMing more next week too - a Sunday session at the club where it can get very noisy and some of the players can be quite disruptive. We'll see how that goes nearer the time. I happened to have prepped this particular adventure - a 3-4 hour one we call a One-Shot  - about a year ago so that will give me a head-start.

But anyway, that's stationery and how it helps me. Aren't I great? YES.